The invisibility of labour

7000 athletes came to Delhi for the CWG and their effect was such that a proportion of the city had either left to accommodate them, went on leave so as to stay out of their way or were removed because they were not photogenic enough. A whole township was built for the athletes, as were several roads, stadia and flyovers. On the other hand, anywhere between 300,000 to a million migrant workers came to the city for various construction projects and they seemed to have effortlessly melted into the bowels of the city. They were barely noticed even when in plain sight and were for most part tucked away in forgotten corners of the city. The influx of such a large number made no apparent difference to the life of the middle class, which saw no additional pressure on any resources, largely because these massive number of people barely consumed any. They lived in make shift shanties made of flimsy tin, and as has been documented by many organisations, worked for considerably less than minimum wages.

For an event like the CWG, the question of why when we are spending an estimated Rs 70,000 crores for an event that lasts all of two weeks and is by no means essential for the country, could we not have spent a little more and ensured that we treated the people who actually put the show together with a modicum of decency is that deserves an answer. If we are going to spend such enormous sums of money for something little more than a showpiece, should it not also showcase our concern for the poor? And while the CWG, given its scale and plumage value, becomes a graphic demonstration of the conditions faced by migrant labour, the issue is a much larger one.

Construction and agriculture in India depend on unorganised labour, and they represent the mechanism by which the market manages its costs. Employers route their need for cheap labour through a network of contractors and sub-contractors who take advantage of this under-regulated sector. So we routinely see the sight of temporary hovels sitting next to plush new buildings as they are being constructed and the irony doesn’t seem to register on us at all. It is possible to argue that when a small farmer employs labour in the field, it is economically unviable for him to pay minimum wages, given that he himself is eking out a living. That argument does not hold when we speak of large projects with massive budgets where no expense is spared to deliver the best. In these cases, when every other link in the chain is looked after well, why should contract labour have to work under the conditions they do? If our aim to produce world class factories, buildings and infrastructure, why should our treatment of labour also not be world class?

The argument that paying the work force more would make these projects unviable or that the wages represent market forces are both flawed. Salary costs have zoomed up in India over the last decade and businesses have no problem accommodating these. Labour costs are deemed expensive because these can be manipulated and controlled; had they been seen as an unalterable fact of life, employers would work around them. To argue that the market decides wages on the basis of demand and supply is to ignore the needfor certain minimum standards that lay outside the pale of negotiations. This is true for product quality which needs to conform to certain standards irrespective of whether the market demands them or not and must be true for the kind of livelihood provided to the labour force.

In a larger sense, we seem to have exorcised India of its workforce. While we still see the odd image of the farmer on television and in cinema, we barely get to see the worker any more. Television news rarely covers them(barring the odd shining example) and no stories are told about this group in any popular culture form anymore. The city corresponds to our image of the present while the village gets represented in terms of what we must leave behind but labour, be it urban or rural seems to strike no chords in our imagination. Labour seems both invisible and weightless, and unlike slums which by their physical presence sit heavily on the horizons of the middle class as a problem or nuisance that must be tackled, migrant labour has a wispy presence that calls no attention to itself whatsoever.

Of course, the attractiveness of India as a market, a project that seems so close to our heart, will need substantial upward movement of the standards of living of India’s workforce. The difference between developed economies and those that are emerging is much less pronounced at the top, and indeed in India’s case, we are doing quite well at this end of the spectrum. The real mass of purchasing power will lie at the bottom end, for here every rupee earned will almost certainly be a rupee spent. More importantly we need to examine how we have managed to separate the notion of India’s development from that of the progress made by ordinary Indians and how little interest we exhibit in the latter. Instead of obsessing about symbolic showcases like the CWG, which do little for India either as a culture or even as a market, it might be worthwhile to focus on really upgrading the life of ordinary Indians. But for that we have to get interested in the everyday life of the ordinary Indian. Well, some of us watched Peepli Live, didn’t we?

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional. He says he has strayed into writing entirely by accident, and for this he is "grateful". "City City Bang Bang" looks at contemporary Indian society from an everyday vantage point. It covers issues big and small, tends where possible to avoid judgmental positions, and tries instead to understand what makes things the way they are. The desire to look at things with innocent doubt helps in the emergence of fresh perspectives and hopefully, of clarity of a new kind.

Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional. He says he has strayed into writing entirely by accident, and for this he is "grateful". "City City Bang Bang" l. . .